Our Practice
Studio Urbis is a design practice providing architectural and urban design services, including programming, space planning, and feasibility studies for residential, commercial, and urban development projects. We design buildings, interiors, places, and furniture. The practice was founded in 2000 and led by two principals: Thomas Chastain AIA, Renee Chow AIA, with Associate Chris Lesnett, AIA. Our office is small by design, allowing us to focus on compelling projects at all scales.
We are committed to a collaborative process with our clients, approaching design by listening, discovering, and communicating the particular needs and qualities that make for successful and unique projects. Whether working with communities, client groups, or individuals, we make the design process transparent and open, sharing our thinking and solutions in ways that enable all participants. Good design depends on learning —learning about circumstances, people, cultures, environments, and the potential of architecture to support them. Ours is a research approach to design, used to find innovative solutions.
We believe that architecture's task is to help people be at home in the world and see every project as an opportunity to connect people to a place. Our interest is in achieving the most from the construction of buildings and sites, by recognizing the qualities inherent in materials, no matter how modest, and using them directly to build well.
Good design takes responsibility for its contribution to the environment and the economies to construct and maintain it. This includes the integration of sustainable technologies and resource-efficient design practices as part of the architecture. Design needs to accommodate immediate needs while envisioning changing demands. For us, a project's constraints, whether technical, economic, contextual, or regulatory, are opportunities to explore and innovate. We approach any design, regardless of its scope, as a chance to make a more livable, more meaningful, and more supportive environment.
Architecture is an optimistic enterprise and design the opportunity to make the world better.
